Amnesty

Amnesty is defined by Webster’s New World Law Dictionary as “A pardon for past criminal offenses for a class or group of individuals who are subject to trial but have not yet been convicted.” More specifically as it pertains to illegal aliens in the United States, the amnesty debate in Congress concerns whether or not illegal aliens should be rewarded by allowing them to escape penalties for their law-breaking and giving them precisely what they broke the laws to obtain: the right to live and work in the United States.

Prior to the Immigration and Reform Control Act of 1986, the United States government previously granted amnesty on a case by case basis. Since 1986, there have been Seven mass amnesties and additional amnesties are proposed in Congress every year. Fortunately, the last mass amnesty was passed over a decade ago. In 2007, Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 which would have given amnesty to 12 to 20 million illegal aliens, this would have beed detrimental to the overpopulation problem. Fortunately the bill failed mostly because to the efforts of NumbersUSA’s activists faxing and phone call campaigns to the senators’ offices. In June 2012, President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals “DACA” which allows illegal aliens who came as children to stay in the United States. Officials began accepting applications for “DACA” in August 2012.

Any amnesty allow illegal aliens to permanetly stay in the United States. Eventually, these individuals will be allowed to sponsor their immediate and distant relatives, thereby making America’s overpopulation problem even worse.

• Historically, each time the U.S. government enacted an amnesty, illegal immigration numbers increased sharply thereafter.

• The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 granted amnesty to 2.7 million illegal aliens. The purpose of IRCA was to lower illegal immigration. Instead, illegal immigration increased fivefold, from around 140,000 per year in the 1980s to 700,000 per year today.

• Granting amnesty would allow access to taxpayer-funded services such as welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and MediCal, for millions of illegal aliens.

• One study found that the net cost to the federal government of granting amnesty to 3.8 million illegal aliens would average $5,000 per household, for a total cost of $19 billion.

• Congress is currently considering offering amnesty to the estimated 12-20 million illegal aliens living in the United States.

• Granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would open the door to many more newcomers, as each person granted citizenship could bring over his/her family—legally. Simply bringing the parents of each new citizen here would mean allowing another 24-40 million people to settle in the United States.

• Currently, one-tenth of the flow of legal immigrants to the United States are parents of naturalized recent immigrants.

• All parents of naturalized immigrants would be eligible for citizenship—and therefore also be eligible for Medicaid and Social Security benefits, for a total cost to the U.S. government of $18,000 per person.